


The Hand that Feeds

by ProbablyNotALostPrincess



Category: Zombies Run!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-11
Updated: 2015-11-11
Packaged: 2018-05-01 04:40:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5192702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProbablyNotALostPrincess/pseuds/ProbablyNotALostPrincess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A very very short back-story for S04M12. Expect spoilers, but I've tried to keep them minimal, so it depends on how sensitive you are.</p>
<p>This is the first fic I ever write for anything, and oh god, I'm writing it for a fitness app.</p>
<p>Also, it's incidentally the only non-non-fiction text I have ever written.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hand that Feeds

At this point, the coffee had long since stopped working. She gulped it all down anyway, feeling a pang of guilt for all the hard work other people had put into getting her that coffee. All the Runner sweat. Neither Abel nor New Canton had been successful in growing their own coffee, despite someone having found a couple of seeds somewhere, god only knew where. But it was important to keep them going, alert. A lot of people had given up so much to get them here. Before the Apocalypse, this would have been a mediocre placement with horrible working conditions. But a lot of things had changed.

They had arrived here all bright-eyed, ready to save humanity, cure the zombie plague and do serious science. But if she was really honest with herself it was neither the promise of glory nor the excitement of discovery that drove her here. It was the work itself. Working in a real lab again, with all the best and brightest that the Ministry could spare, it felt a lot like having a tiny piece of her old life back. Like she could just hang back, listen to the hum of the electric fans maintaining the air pressure and forget that the Apocalypse ever happened. And they had unlimited access to coffee.

But the hours were atrocious. They needed results from that viking zombie arm, and Victoria was driving them on almost every day now. They had started disregarding security protocols almost right away. They weren't exactly ordered to, but given the parameters they had, it was clear that the work just couldn't be done otherwise. At first they had cut all the corners they could without compromising security. But that was long ago, and things had gotten downhill from there. And people were getting tired now. Worn out. At this point, even the quality of the results had begun to suffer. They constantly had to repeat previous work, just to make sure they hadn't botched it somehow. And more than once they found out they had. More than once, she had found people staring blankly into their microscopes.

Victoria wasn't pleased. They could all tell, even though she tried to appear patient. God, she was just a child after all. But nobody seemed to notice, and she didn't seem to let them either. Something was clearly eating her, but they never figured out what. Maybe it was Paula's deteriorating condition, but that was mostly hearsay. It wasn't as if anybody ever told them anything. They were just the lab rats.

The sudden sound of a commotion startled her. She scrambled to her feet and followed the noises through the series of corridors and pressurised doors to the high-risk labs. Arriving there, she could immediately see that something had gone terribly wrong. Beakers and instruments were overturned, and people were on the floor, writhing. She turned on her heels and ran to the emergency containment controls near the back of the room, pressing down hard on the big red button.

It was then that she felt it; a tickling near the back of her throat and a burning sensation. She let out a cough as she felt her body stiffening.

»Oh«, she thought. »That's interesting. We made it airborne. Victoria will be pleased«. But all that came out of her lips was a low moan.


End file.
